For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.

The emotions may be endless. The more we express them, the more we may have to express.

Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes.

I can only do what's easy. I can only entice and be enticed. I can't, and won't, attempt difficult relations. If I marry it will either be a man who's strong enough to boss me or whom I'm strong enough to boss. So I shan't ever marry, for there aren't such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry, for I shall certainly run away from him before you can say 'Jack Robinson.

Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form.

We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.

But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.